Training description
Spreading across more than 6 hours of full-hd video, this Advanced Training Course is based on a real production CG shot I did for a commercial some time ago – a submarine submerging under on a frozen see. We’re going to build the 3d scene in Houdini and setup the render-passes to have maximum flexibility in compositing. Fix it in post will also be taken into consideration but to a smaller degree than usual since this training is focused on Houdini.

The video includes only the 3d part of the production but at the end we’re going to briefly discuss the steps that were done at the compositing stage.

While I tried to keep as much of the original recording as possible I did had to edit out some of the render times and a few crashes happened here and there.

We’re going to start with quickly modeling a proxy version of the submarine that we’re going to use until we receive the high-rez version from the shot supervisor. Then we will create the ice using a combination of procedural and classic poly-modeling techniques. Based on the feedback from the shot supervisor we will then tweak the high rez submarine we received and we’re also going to do some changes to the ice. Besides some modeling tweaks for the ice we’re going to animate the broken pieces that are left behind the submarine and we’ll do this using dynamics. Also based on the feedback we’re going to quickly model a ground object.

After the modeling part is done we’re going to focus on lighting the submarine and the ice keeping in mind that we’re going to rely heavily on render passes. We’ll set up rim-lights, fill-lights and all that’s necessary for our submarine to look the best.

Then we’ll work on the shaders, again focusing on the ice and the submarine. And since we’re under deadline we’ll search for a good balance between looks and render times.

Next we’re going to setup the render passes to offer maximum flexibility in post and we’re going to finish this training with talking a bit about the final result and the steps that I made in compositing.

Note that the Training Course can be both downloaded to be watched offline or it can be streamed online. Also, for easier access the video is split into 5 parts.